Life in the Ruins

Even in a city with tens of thousands of abandoned buildings, the Packard is a notorious ruin. Its 40-odd buildings sprawl across more than 35 acres on the east side, attracting scrappers, graffiti artists, vandals and European tourists, who come to photograph the vast hollowed-out rooms and crumbling exteriors. It’s the kind of ruin porn that Detroit has become known for, much to the frustration of its residents.

The scale of the place — a half-mile end to end, and five stories at its tallest — makes it easy to spot. So do the fires that burn uncontrolled almost daily (the city’s fire department has declared the space too dangerous to enter). There are few local boosters. A recent editorial in The Detroit Free Press called the Packard plant “an international symbol of Detroit’s decline,” and lobbied for its flattening.  

But on a wintry morning last month, Mr. Hill appeared unfazed by the negative attention directed at his home. Wearing a heavy black coat and work boots, he stood in the freezing warehouse space giving a visitor a history lesson.

“Back in ’56, this place was the old forge area,” he said in a voice strangely devoid of inflection. His white beard and wire-frame glasses gave him the appearance of a live-in curator of a rogue museum.

“Packards were luxury cars, utmost luxury,” he went on. “Kings, queens, emperors had to have them.”

The building had the expansiveness of an airplane hangar (it is at least 90,000 square feet, Mr. Hill said), and like an “American Pickers” dreamscape, it was heaped with mechanical detritus: tools, welding tanks, old outboard motors, an Ironworker machine for cutting metal. A valet parking shed had been tossed into a corner. In the inky darkness toward the back, a visitor could make out larger things: several cars, a dump truck.

Pointing to the carcass of a Winnebago, only its frame and driver’s cab remaining, Mr. Hill said it was one of the many fix-it projects that occupy his days. “It’s got a 440 Chrysler engine,” he said. “I wanted to put it in a rat rod, but, you know, there’s not enough hours in the day.” 

Unlike most of the buildings in the complex, Mr. Hill’s home is structurally sound and fully enclosed behind corrugated metal doors. Mr. Hill said the owner, Fat-Yu Chan, asked him to move in and ensure that it remains that way. “I take care of it, do some maintenance,” Mr. Hill said, explaining that as caretaker he pays maintenance and utility costs like electricity but no rent. (Property records confirm that Mr. Chan owns the building in which Mr. Hill lives. When reached at home he refused to speak to a reporter and didn’t return several follow-up messages left on his voice mail. So it was not possible to corroborate Mr. Hill’s account of the arrangement.)

As Mr. Hill is otherwise uncompensated for his work, he said, he takes on odd jobs to supplement his Social Security checks.

Mr. Hill walked toward an office area behind a cinder-block wall, where a bathroom, an oven and makeshift bedrooms serve as a living quarters of sorts. “This is my nerve center,” he said, entering a low-ceilinged room with several bookcases and the heavy musk of dog.

Mr. Hill takes in down-at-the-heels friends and animals; he currently shares the place with his son Randy and a rescued mutt named Chainsaw.

Randy, who is in his 40s but has the moody and sarcastic demeanor of a teenager, was swaddled in a coat and hoodie, his large body parked behind a computer. “This is what passes for the warm room,” he said. 

Despite the lack of niceties like heat or reliable running water (in colder months the pipes freeze), Mr. Hill said it’s been “a blessing” living in the Packard plant. “It’s given me time to reflect on my life,” he said, adding, in reference to his two divorces and years as a heavy drinker: “See where I went wrong. See if I can maybe change some parts of my life.” 

In a short film about Mr. Hill made last year by two Brooklyn filmmakers and posted online, he comes across as a cleareyed witness to the deterioration of the Packard facility, if not American manufacturing. The crime, the poverty, the wacky juxtaposition of urban decline and renewal happening every day in Detroit: Mr. Hill takes it all in, blithely, from his spot in the old plant.